


consuming

by simaetha



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Body Horror, Gen, Third Age
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-06
Updated: 2015-09-06
Packaged: 2018-04-19 09:15:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4740959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/simaetha/pseuds/simaetha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>...For one of the hungry Houseless, if it is admitted to the friendship of the Living, may seek to eject the fëa from its body; and in the contest for mastery the body may be gravely injured, even if it be not wrested from its rightful inhabitant. Or the Houseless may plead for shelter, and if it is admitted, then it will seek to enslave its host and use both his will and his body for its own purposes. It is said that Sauron did these things, and taught his followers how to achieve them.</i>
</p><p>- Laws and Customs Among the Eldar</p>
            </blockquote>





	consuming

Noon in Barad-dûr: intense light and heat, the black stone of the fortress drinking sunlight until to tread upon it unprotected is enough to sear and burn at a touch. Here, a thousand feet above the smoke and dust of the plains, the exposed outer layers of the Tower are almost silent, the business of the fortress waiting for nightfall, and the cool and soothing dark.

Your Master stands alone on the battlements, and you wait, lingering at the threshold, content to be patient as long as the summons requires. The sunlight illuminates the straight line of your Master's back; glints painfully-bright from the gold braided into your Master's hair, a cascade of dark plaits that reaches to the waist, matched by further ornaments at wrist and throat.

The body, this time, is female, with the very dark skin of a woman of the South: tall, and lovely, as is your Master's preference. Viewed from here, she could almost be human, standing graceful and poised between the parapet's crenellations, her bare hands resting on the hot stone; were it not for the corona of power that outlines her figure, a subtle, dangerous refraction in the air around her, like lightning in the moment before the strike; were it not for the perfect, absolute stillness with which she stands.

Then she turns, and -

The sunlight strikes through her flesh like smoke; like water.

In her face are the charred bones of the skull, glancing through her features; her cheek showing the skeletal configuration of the temporal bone, the interlocking rows of teeth. Here and then gone: there is the smooth flesh, the lithe muscle; and then, glimpsed for a moment, the line of clavicle, the scorched curve of the mandible, darkened as if by fire.

You meet her eyes, which are, as always, entirely her own; the iris yellow in the blackened sclera.

"Khamûl," she says: her mouth curving upwards, amusement and scorn. "You allowed escape to the - _creature_."

It isn't a question: she knows you will do her bidding. But you incline your head, nonetheless.

She moves, and you step aside to let her walk past you, following her into the shadows with some relief. The chambers within are dimly-lit, a hazy sheen that outlines more than illuminates: her movements as she paces are both more and less solid, a fluid darkness that is from moment to moment both the solid form of a woman and the outline of a burning shadow.

"After all this time!" she says; and you understand that she is speaking to herself, and not to you. "After all this time - a thousand years, huddled in some dank pond under a mountain, with that cringing animal fawning over it, crawling wretched as a worm in its foul hiding-place!"

She laughs, vicious as the crack of a whip.

" _Shire!_ " your Master says, her voice rich with contempt. " _Baggins!_ What great enemies we have, Khamûl; what terrible foes! From Isildur of Númenor to the hand of a halfling thief!"

She turns to you again, her smile a furious baring of teeth.

"Follow our worm, then, Khamûl," she says. "Let him lead you to it. Let him seek my Ring: and let his own greed return to me what is mine; let him bring me back my treasure."

Her smile is still terrible.

She stretches out her hands before her, and the spread of fingers in the darkness is flesh; is a shadow among shadows; is charred, smoking bone.

"But first - " she says; and you understand, at once, what she requires.

***

"Please - " the mortal slave manages, crouched in a submissive huddle at your feet, "no, _please_ \- "

"Oh, no, child," your Master says, velvet and steel. "None of _that_."

Your Master reaches out; her hand forces his gaze upwards to meet her own, her eyes a yellow flame in the darkness, wide-pupilled and intent.

"Are you not _honoured_ , child?" she asks. "Is this not a more exalted service than was ever dreamed of by your petty kind? But I am generous indeed."

" _No_ \- "

Your Master stands.

At his feet are ashes, and shards of aged, blackened bone; your Master steps barefoot across the floor, carelessly kicking aside the jewellery scattered among the gritty dust and remnants, leaving grey traces of his steps on the polished stone.

He glances towards you: his eyes still bright as fire, movements fluid and precise; paler, this time, but with a weight of auburn hair like silk that is already falling about his shoulders as he reaches up, impatient, to unbind it.

There is blood on his teeth, already, as he smiles.

"Soon," he says. " _Soon!_ "

And truly, your Master's patience runs thin, in these latter days: the bodies he wears falling to ashes and dust, kindling and bone, in weeks or months, the spirit screaming all the while; burning out more swiftly than was once the case, without pity for the limitations of the forms he inhabits, their transient mortality, their hindering need for rest and sleep and sustenance; the slow misery of their dying.

He steps forward to stand at the threshold, pausing for a moment, framed in light.

"The Ring," he says, softly; "and all the rest shall follow: the empty throne of Gondor broken before me, and the last, fading remnants of the Eldar driven into the Sea; the Three Rings of Power in my hands as they should have been an Age ago, before the fall of Númenor; the so-called _Istari_ utterly defeated; and then - and _then_ \- "

You wait, silent.

" _Go_ , Khamûl," he says; and laughs, again, turning back to you, heedless of the blood that shows red upon his mouth: the weight of his power already beginning its work of destruction upon the mortal body, unendurable, unbearable. "Who will stand against us, once this is achieved?"

You step around the ashes as you go.


End file.
